What choices!
Americans of voting age will shortly have a complicated choice to make between Donald Chump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
We know about Mr Chump; he is. Hillary Clinton is altogether more complicated and, in her adult life, she has attracted attention in the Whitewater affair, as wife and first lady to Bill Clinton and as Secretary of State.
The Washington Post, which had been a steady admirer of Bill Clinton for most of his eight years in office, wrote “the defining characteristic of the Clintons is their incapacity to feel embarrassment.”
This comment was due to “the squalid Clinton exit” as he left office. The Clintons left the White House rather short of furniture; it is thought that they had purloined approximately $190,000 worth of White House furniture! In addition, Clinton exercised his constitutional privilege of pardoning people as he left office. One was Marc Rich, who had been convicted of trading with the enemy. Mr Rich, apart from charges of massive tax evasion and money laundering, had traded with Libya in defiance of the embargo; with Iran whilst American hostages were held there; with Iraq through the Gulf War and with South Africa in defiance of the United States embargo against the Apartheid government. Then the news came out that Mr Rich’s former wife had given $450,000 to the nascent Clinton Library, $3 million to Democrat fundraising lunches and $10,000 to Mr Clinton’s legal defence fund.
In the UK, post the Brexit vote, labour supporters will have to vote for Owen Smith or Jeremy Corbyn. Such quality choices.
I attach the 2016-17 tax tables, which include a boggling array of tax breaks through changes in the taxation of investment income and a complete nonsense with the introduction of the nil rate band for the principal residence and the calculating of Inheritance Tax thereon. The principal residence nil rate band is not a consistent relief and, therefore, will be unfair to differing estate owners and it is not likely to last the test of time. It will not be fully introduced until 2020.